Meet our coaches!
Alia Mahmoud is the Director of Leadership Development at Radical Partners, a social impact accelerator dedicated to mobilizing leaders and locals to solve South Florida's most pressing issues. She is also the co-founder and CEO of Fouta Harissa, a social enterprise that designs high-quality, hand-loomed textiles that preserve artisanal weaving in Tunisia and celebrate the soul of Brazilian beach culture. Passionate about the intersection of business and social good, she came to Miami by way of Tunisia where she served as the Regional Citizenship Manager for Microsoft in the Middle East and North African region.
Alia has delivered multiple TedxTalks on entrepreneurship and innovation and was named one of the “10 Most Inspiring Arab-American Leaders to Watch in 2017” by the Huffington Post. She is also the co-founder of Aminta Ventures, a coalition of women working to cultivate the next generation of female angel investors and “Le15,” a seed fund and accelerator program for innovative startups in Tunisia. She is a graduate of New York University with a Master of Science in International Business and Economic Development.
Andreina Weichselbaumer makes sure we bring our values and rad culture everywhere we go! She manages and promotes our organizational culture and is the backbone of some of our collective impact efforts. She is a multilingual and intercultural leader with experience in cultural science research, human-centered design, and project management in local and global collaborations. She enjoys learning from the challenges of new environments and is passionate about conflict resolution and creating equal opportunities for all communities.
Before working with Radical Partners, Andreina lived in Germany to earn her Master of Arts in Intercultural Communication and European Studies and coordinated international social work projects for refugees in Germany and in Greece. She’s a jigsaw puzzle junkie, loves adventures and gardening, and is pretty great at crafting.
Brent Saiontz is a Managing Partner at 305 Innovative Solutions, an advisory firm that provides strategic, financial, and transactional services to early stage businesses and nonprofits. He has founded, advised, and invested in companies in industries including technology, education, utilities, healthcare, specialty finance, and automated merchandising. Brent worked previously as an M&A investment banker at Deutsche Bank Securities and private equity investment professional at H.I.G. Capital, where he worked with gaming, industrial, chemicals, and business services companies. In the Miami community he serves as a mentor and volunteer with Teach for America and is a Committee Member for United Way’s Center for Excellence in Early Education and serves as CFO of education nonprofit Achieve Miami. He received an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from Harvard University.
Brett McNaught became the CEO of Educate Tomorrow in 2012. Since 2012 Educate Tomorrow has grown from under $700,000 annual budget to over $3,000,000. Educate Tomorrow was founded in 2003 to support foster and disenfranchised students in achieving higher education and greater stability in their transition to adulthood. Educate Tomorrow has received awards for partnership, leadership and innovation from Florida Department of Children and Families, Florida International University, Miami Dade College, Voices for Children, The Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, and College Board.
Brett is an alumni of the National Urban Fellows Executive Leadership Program and The Miami Foundation Miami Leaders program. Brett was an officer of buildOn where he led their International programs from 2005-2012 overseeing the construction of over 1,000 classrooms for more than 40,000 children in rural Haiti, Nicaragua, Senegal, Mali, Malawi, Nepal and India. Brett served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, West Africa from 2001-2003.
He has a M.S.Ed in Community and Social Change from the University of Miami. He is currently a board member of Hope for Haiti and is co-chair of the Education and Employment committee for Helping Our Miami Youth (HOMY). Brett was a participant in Cohort 1 of the Social Entrepreneurship program of Radical Partners.
Da-Venya L. Armstrong President and CEO of Armstrong Creative Consulting (A.C.C.), is a native Miamian. Founded in 1999 and based in South Florida, A.C.C. provides creative marketing, public relations and event management services to a variety of clients. Over the past 20 years, A.C.C. has achieved an impressive track record. Most recently, A.C.C. was recognized as the Black Owned Media Alliance (B.O.M.A.) 2017 Black Advertising Agency of the Year. Da-Venya was also honored by Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. as a Trailblazing Woman in Business and Labor; Legacy Magazine Region’s Power Public Relations Professionals 2016, Living Legends Award by Excel International Church, and was named Legacy Magazine’s 40 Under 40 Black Leaders of Today and Tomorrow 2014. Ms. Armstrong is a communications and marketing scholar from Miami-Dade College and the University of Miami. Bringing passion and excellence to whatever she does, she is committed to helping others achieve their business and personal goals, and to working to build healthy families and communities. While she enjoys serving the community that she was born and raised, her greatest accomplishment is raising and nurturing her twenty-two-year-old daughter, Taryn. Professional affiliations: Miami-Dade Chamber of Commerce, Black Owned Media Alliance, ColorComm.
Holly Woodbury, MPA, CFRE has more than 20 years of experience in resource development leadership, management, and coaching.
She brings a depth of knowledge in building fundraising capacity, soliciting major gifts, recruiting and managing volunteer leadership, identifying in-kind resources, researching and launching social enterprises, creating communications strategies, and establishing strategic partnerships.
Her passion for this work has taken her around the world to lead teams for local, national, and international nonprofit organizations.
Since 2010, Jennifer Heslop has been helping leaders strengthen their businesses by finding creative solutions to organizational problems. As a Coach, she holds space for leaders, creating a safe and encouraging environment where they gain confidence, overcome emotional uncertainties and master business and personal challenges to become more decisive and strategic decision makers. Her 20 year career experience has been in the arts & entertainment and nonprofit industries in New York and Miami. She has helped leaders improve the way they communicate in business and become more organized and assertive leaders who execute more strategically. She has also consulted with several non profit organizations creating more cohesive operating systems during business transition and scaling. In her role as a leadership coach for Radical Partners, Jennifer has validated the efficacy of leadership programming by advising on the applicability and experiences of the participants.
Jennifer believes that intermittent personal and business inventory is the foundation for growth, innovation and success. One of her passions is utilizing SWOT analysis as a powerful tool to reveal areas that hinder or support the advancement of a leader and the leader’s business. Currently, Jennifer is developing a series of 30-day organizational planners designed to highlight areas of vulnerabilities while motivating you to “push through” to accomplish your goals. Jennifer Heslop is a die hard New Yorker living in Miami, Florida with her hubby and 6 year old daughter, Justice:)
Jennifer Hudson is passionate about helping emerging businesses and non-profits use powerful and effective communication to strengthen their brand and grow in ways they may have never imagined. For more than 20 years, she has developed and implemented strategic communications programs for both corporate and non-profit clients.
Prior to launching ThinkBeyond, Hudson served as vice president of communications for the southeast USA, Latin America and the Caribbean at British Airways. Her career also includes corporate communications roles at American Airlines and Sabre, a travel technology company. Hudson has served in advisory, membership, sponsorship, development and public relations roles on various non-profit, governmental and professional association boards in South Florida. She is currently president-elect and programming chair of the Fort Lauderdale chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.
Fluent in Spanish, Hudson has worked throughout Latin America and lived in Spain, England, and Mexico. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Spanish from Austin College in Sherman, Texas, and a master’s degree in Journalism and Public Relations from the University of North Texas. Hudson adores spending time with her family, eating delicious food (usually healthy and organic), exercise, and all things Spain.
Magdalena Pire Schmidt is an OKR and management coach with a background in tech and linguistics. She’s been in Miami since 2019. Before that, Magdalena spent 8+ years working at Google where she managed a global legal operations team. Today Magdalena enables organizations and individual professionals to improve their execution by applying the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) methodology. Magdalena runs Heron, a weekly accountability group that helps individuals define and stick to a clear quarterly objective. Magdalena contributes regularly to the Miami non-profit sector and is a trained counselor at Crisis Text Line.
Marcia Narine Weldon is a former public company Deputy General Counsel, Compliance Officer, and Chief Privacy Officer who provides strategic consulting services and practical legal solutions for businesses and individuals related to employment law, compliance, and corporate transactions. I am a lawyer who understands business.
Mirva Cadet is the Founder and President of Cornerstone Global Collaborative, whose mission is to help build the infrastructure of community-based organizations in the areas of strategic planning, organizational culture, program design, development, and implementation with equity at the center. Since the inception of her consulting firm, she has assisted several for-profit and non-profit organizations in their efforts to sustain and expand their services. She began her career in Tallahassee as a Clinical Coordinator, then advanced her career as a Program Developer, and a Non-profit Executive in various non-profit organizations in Miami-Dade County prior to serving as the Chief Operations Officer for Gang Alternative, Inc. for 11 years.
In 2014, Rep. Frederica Wilson of the 24th District recognized Ms. Cadet in the Congressional Records as woman of the year for her hard-work and dedication to her community. She continues to develop new professionals in the field as an Adjunct Professor and trainer for FIU and as a Surveyor for the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF). She also serves as a Director of Program for the Children’s Services Council of Palm Beach County where she oversees the Professional Development Department.
Sandra LaFleur is Miami Dade College's Director of Changemaking Education and Social Innovation. In her role at the largest public institution of higher education, Sandra focuses on building and sustaining the College's social impact education ecosystem. She works with MDC’s eight campus teams to embed changemaking education into both curricular and co-curricular opportunities. Sandra's past experience in the youth development and college success fields have focused on strategy setting, operational planning, organizational growth and change management, program/product design and execution, innovation and research, talent, and communications.
Her past roles include serving as National VP of Program for Summer Search and as National Associate VP of Research, Evaluation, and Innovation for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. She currently serves as a national board member for The National Mentoring Partnership and Children's Literacy Initiative, and she sits on the local boards of the Awesome Foundation Miami and Rising Up Adventures.